Do Dem Leaders Really Think Their Voters Are Just Racists?

Below, Hugh Hewitt has written extensively on all the reasons Democrats are justified in feeling nervous about Barack Obama -- his radical associations, far-left policies, lack of any meaningful employment experience outside politics and paucity of legislative achievement, among other things.

But in the same Washington Post piece to which Hugh refers, there are some telling quotes from Dem leaders who just don't get it. For them, the opposition to Barack can be about nothing but racism:

But for some delegates, the concern is a more fundamental one: They do not share Obama's confidence that he can overcome the resistance many voters may have to electing a black president with an unusual background and name.

Some, such as Rendell, worry aloud about the "Bradley effect" -- the theory, disputed by some political scientists, that voters are likely to tell pollsters they will support a black candidate even though they don't intend to. With a little more than two months to go until Election Day, some of these most ardent and veteran Democrats have not bought into the idealism that has driven the campaign from the start and are unsure whether their neighbors and co-workers are ready for Obama.

"You don't want to play the race card, but it's out there," [AFSCME boos Barry] Bogarde said. He, like others, said he hopes Obama's selection of Biden would help get wary voters over the hump, with Biden acting as an emissary to communities like his native Scranton, Pa. "I just think the trade and labor movement was not ready for some of the major changes we're looking at" in Obama, Bogarde said. "Biden's close to the trades, and it plays better with him."

Here's some news for the Democratic elites: The vast majority of your rank and file voters aren't racist. If they were, Barack wouldn't have won the primaries. But they're also not loony leftists who feel comfortable with a nominee who launched his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist.

The problem the Democrats now face is that they embraced a radical candidate who speechified as if he were a moderate -- and the press was so enamored of him that they didn't give voters the information they needed to make an informed decision.

It's illustrative of the mindset of Democrat elites, however, that they don't see the problems with Barack's far left policies and associations -- for them, race is the only possible stumbling block for their constituents.